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The way you are in a relationship is determined by who you actually are. That absolutely is a part of effectiveness in a coaching conversation–both for a coach and for a client.

It’s time for some self reflection…what do you see?To reach the pinnacle of your coaching effectiveness, there are some self-oriented realizations that will make you more effective. You can group those realizations into three categories: self-awareness, self esteem, and self efficacy. Self-Awareness is defined on Wikipedia as the capacity for introspection and the ability to reconcile oneself as an individual separate from the environment and other individuals.

Put more simply, it’s the ability to be on top of the feelings, impulses, and thoughts that run through yourself at any given time. High levels of self-awareness are especially important for coaches because your thoughts and feelings help determine what you say to your client. The ability to be decisive about the helpfulness of your thoughts and feelings to your clients is a crucial skill for effective coaching.

Self-Esteem is a term used in psychology to reflect a person’s overall emotional evaluation of his or her own worth. Issues of low self-esteem are familiar topics in coaching relationships, but may be more effectively dealt with in a counseling relationship. The key factor is whether an action plan will help an individual deal with their self-esteem challenges, or if the key issue is rooted in the individual’s thoughts or feelings about their past.

Self-efficacy is the measure of one’s own ability to complete tasks and reach goals. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-efficacy) Even though we typically pay much more attention to self-awareness and self esteem, I would argue that self efficacy is the most important measure a coach can focus on. Helping a client understand accurately what they’re capable of doing is one of the things that good coaches do most effectively.

Challenging a client to see their capabilities as just a little bit stronger than they actually are can inspire the client to take on projects that are harder than the norm. What are your strategies to coach for higher levels of self efficacy?

his is where bold questions really began to pay off. A question that helps a client see possibilities that otherwise weren’t on their radar changes their overall perspective. Questions that stretch a client beyond what they thought also add to self-efficacy.

And maybe most important, stretch goals that take several sessions to actually accomplish are a tremendously effective strategy for building self-efficacy over time. Clients that believe they can accomplish more than their previous track record would indicate are usually the clients that end up being most satisfied in coaching relationships. And self-efficacy is a key part of that process.

Deep listening, bold questions, and action steps are the cores skills that function as the building blocks of effective coaching. Bold questions is in the middle of this list for a reason.

Which question do you ask most often?The holy grail of being a coach is asking that question that causes the client to think. It’s a moment that can’t be undervalued, in impact for the client, and truthfully, enjoyment for the coach. Think back to your recent coaching sessions: there was a moment where you asked a question and the client was quiet. You could almost feel their brain moving, thinking through all the options your question caused, and beginning to prepare an answer that would be forming as they were saying it.

Moments like those, are why coaching is so powerful. Drawing out of another person exactly what they’re thinking, and what’s most important to them–well, there’s nothing better in a coaching relationship.

But how can you improve your question-asking skills so that these moments happen more often? I want to suggest forming your questions around a core set of ideas I call BAM! will take you there. BAM! questions are called that partly because the pieces of a given situation seem to all of a sudden BAM! together and make sense. But the acronym B-A-M also focuses the areas where BAM! questions have the most chance of making an impact.

Behavior—The first focus for a BAM! question is behavior, meaning things you can actually do differently. Sometimes these are simple changes, but other times they require multiple action steps–or even multiple coaching conversations–to get to the point where what you’re doing actually changes. Examples of behavior questions are: “What are you going to do differently this month?”, “What might be the related outcomes that this behavior might cause?” and “What results can you anticipate from doing this particular thing?”

Attitude–The “A” in BAM! stands for attitude.These questions focus on the mindset behind the behavior. Examples are questions like: “How is your previous experience or relationships affecting your thoughts about this issue?”, “What is your outlook about this particular situation/task?” or “How might your ideas be conflicting with your big picture vision?” An attitude question seeks to dig deep, focusing on existing thougths that might be behind a particular behavior. Attitude questions can also challenge clients to think more deeply about what circumstances might affect their actions. As a coach you have an opportunity to help a client instill new thought patterns, beginning with attitude.

Motivation–Motivation questions work on an even deeper level–closely connecting core values or key beliefs in a client to what they’re doing on a day-in/day-out basis. Without deep clarity about what’s important to the client, motivation questions often fall flat. The coach has to understand the relationship, and the client has to have a fairly high level of self-awareness for these questions to be most effective. Many coaches say they don’t ask motivation questions until well into a coaching relationship because they require a more solid relationship. Examples of this kind of question include “How does this action help you live out your values?”, “What makes this so important to you, and what you’re trying to accomplish? “, And “where might be the best option for you to actually move toward your vision? “

There are other kinds of questions as well, each designed to accomplish a different purpose. Some other examples include: Commitment (probing what risk the client is willing to take), Situation (helping the client understand current circumstances) and Assessment (gathering data about a given situation).

Start listening to the questions you asking your coaching conversations… I suspect you’ll find plenty of opportunities to focus on in these three key areas.

Too many coaching relationships brainstorm action steps that seem good at time…but in the bigger picture, don’t really take the person being coached anywhere close to what they’re trying to accomplish.

When coaching a client toward outcomes, there are two different kinds of progress worth drawing out:]1 You know, book learnin’.Learnable progress: measured by what a client learns during the course of pursuing a new goal. This might be research, new skills, insight learning, or other meaningful knowledge that’s acquired during the course of pursuing a particular goal. This also can include character-development and other internal growth components. The core component is that this new information must change the client’s thinking on one or more levels.

]2 Change that you see…and believe in!Observable progress: By setting the right goals and choosing the right action steps, measuring progress should be clearly visible to the naked eye. Observation is the core of any good change system. Effective coaches help mark starting points and note when the scenery around their clients change because they’re moving forward.

It’s crucial to note while both kinds of progress are just that, progress. For the coaching you do to be it’s most effective, there has to be progress toward something. Vision–the bigger picture–has to drive. If your clients can describe how what they’re learning in your coaching relationship is pushing them toward their vision, that’s helpful progress. Observable progress toward your vision is helpful as well.

We’re walking through the four main kinds of intentional relationships: coaching, mentoring, counseling and consulting. In this post we’re going to look at counseling.

The basic equation goes like this: Relationship + Intention + (a variable Idea) = (a type of intentional relationship). In this case, the type of relationship is Counseling. The distinctive component that sets the relationship as Counseling–the moving part–in this case is Introspection.

Hard conversations go better with coffee.Counseling as an intentional relationship is distinctive because the key skills (listening, bold questions, and action steps) are all focused on the internal processing by the client. It could be dealing with life issues, a work situation, or wrestling with whether a person is capable of accomplishing what God is putting in front of them.

On the most basic level, coaching is about accomplishing a task/outcome or working on character development. There has to be a healthy focus on the future. Counseling–at it’s most basic level–looks back at what’s already happened, and develops strategies for coping in the present moment.

In a CoachNet training event a few years ago, one participant described a working relationship between coaching and counseling like this: “The Counseling-Coaching Continuum is a fluid line of client development from healing to growing.”

If this is true, coaching and counseling together have a much higher ceiling than either one does on their own. Think of a continuum from -10 to +10 with a balance point. Once the client is through the healing phase, the client can attend to purpose and potential. That’s a pretty solid continuum: from healing to growing.

In the last blog post, we explored the need for intention in a coaching relationship. Yes, you have to have a relationship first. And yes, both of you have to intentionally choose to use at least a portion of your relational time for coaching.

But it’s really a third part of the equation that makes the real difference. In a coaching relationship, adding purpose into the conversation is what gives your coaching relationships depth and integrity. You can have as solid a relationship as you can imagine plus a high commitment to being intentional, but **without a purpose (knowing exactly WHAT you want to accomplish), the coaching relationship is at risk of going nowhere. **

]1 Is there where you’re going?Think about purpose like the destination for a trip you’re planning. You know where you are when you start, but do you really know where you’re going to end up, specifically? A family vacation might head for the Grand Canyon or the Statue of Liberty… That’s pretty clear, and easy to get your mind around. And that’s exactly the kind of clarity of purpose a coaching relationship needs.

But not all coaching relationships have that clear destination in mind–especially before starting. The most effective coaches say to their client “we are going to get to where you want to go together.” That’s purpose. There’s no conversation about route–at least not at the beginning–there’s only a commitment to get where the client wants to go together.

Now how about this related equation: Relationship + intention + _______= mentoring?

A mentor relationship comes at the process with different goals.]2 Which way is this relationship going?Reproducing skills that the mentor already has in the person being mentored is what a mentor relationship is about. A mentor might even say, “here’s where you’re going to end up when you have the skills that I have.”

In fact, most times the person being mentored doesn’t choose the destination, the route to get there, or how the relationship plays out. All of those cards are in hand of the mentor.